


The Sacrifice

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Category: Les Misérables (TV 2018)
Genre: Ageplay, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Character Thinks They're Duty—Bound To Have Sex, Crying During Sex, Demon Sex, Demons Made Them Do It, Devotion, In Captivity Together, M/M, Multi, Nature Which Wants To Crawl Inside You And Never Come Out, Overstimulation, Panic Attack, Raped While Person They Are Sacrificing Themselves For Watches, Sexy Eldritch Horror, Tentacles, The Blood Of Angry Men Summons the Tentacles in times of Revolution, Touch-Starved, Unwilling Arousal, Virginity, Vulnerability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-01-14 22:51:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18486067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: On the night the barricades fall, the demon river demands its due.This time, three men answer the call.





	1. The Toilers of the Seine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts), [Kainosite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kainosite/gifts).



> CW for Very Explicit Tentacle Monster noncon (now with ageplay)! Please heed tags.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On this night, the river’s siren call comes from that which toils in its depths.

It was a night of horrors: a fitting end to the tumultuous day that had preceded it.

Throughout the long months of winter and spring, the city had teetered on the brink of unrest, which the summer had fanned into violence in the same way as it had two years before. Unlike that bloody upheaval of 1830 which had seen Charles X deposed, this time the National Guard and the state’s forces had managed to defeat the rebels and restore peace to the city, though at great cost. Many lives had been lost on either side. And just when they had managed to get the insurrection under control, the Chief Inspector had come into the Prefecture, announced he was resigning from his position, and walked off into the night like a man heading to his doom.

Of course Rivette followed his Chief — as he had done from the day he arrived at the Prefecture of Police on the Rue de Jérusalem, and as he would do until one of them was dead. Which, it had to be said, might be sooner than Rivette had previously expected. 

It was raining. The sky was obscured by clouds, not a star could be seen. The slick, cobbled streets of the Île de la Cité were empty, the Chief’s uncompromising figure having vanished from sight. Yet some sixth sense tugged insistently at Rivette, aiming him toward the river like an arrow. 

Rivette had not built his career upon questioning his instincts or his responsibilities. His duty was to serve, at all costs — and, plunging through the wet night, he became conscious of his pulse hammering in his ears, the urgency welling up in his throat, all hallmarks of a growing, almost impersonal terror.

What had the Chief meant, that he had brought himself and the police into disrepute? What was he intending to do now?

When Rivette reached the river, he could not help recoiling in surprise. The Seine was in full flood, her waters ruddy and tempestuous, displaced currents attacking both banks of the river in great liquid ropes. The barges moored at the edge were being tossed from side to side in the tumult, and as Rivette watched one of the vessels wrenched itself loose and disappeared instantly down the river’s gullet. 

Rivette hesitated, his heart pounding, the rain plastering his damp hair to his forehead. He had seen this occur once before — in 1830, when Paris had been engulfed in revolutionary carnage. Then, her corpse-lined streets had run dark with blood, and her placid river, whose currents were regular even when enlarged by the rains, had swollen to a roiling, grisly red.

Now, as then, he was put in mind of his childhood home on the unforgiving coasts of Normandy, with her cliffs and merciless open sea, and the spirits that lived in there. Although he had tried his best to leave that fraught heritage behind, he was no stranger to the demons of the natural world and their affinity for men’s blood.

Rivette had come from a proud line of sailors and fishermen, who had over the centuries waged a long battle with the devastating floods and the even more devastating monsters of the coast. He had grown up with stories that he had seen made flesh— of foolhardy men who had believed they could prevail against the ocean, whose boats and ships had been snatched away by the spirits and dashed upon the rocks by the ocean’s creatures; of innocents who had been ransomed to the demons in an attempt at favour or appeasement. 

His mother’s father had been one such sailor, and her brother after him — both lost, as so many others, upon the unrelenting seas. The children of the coasts would routinely face the threat of sacrifice as punishment for bad behaviour; the fishmonger’s young son, rumoured to have been marked by the demon spirits, had proved this to be no mere threat when he had vanished one day and his bones had been found still tethered to the outermost rock facing the sea. 

Rivette had learned this lesson at his mother’s knee: the ocean would give up its treasures, but at the same time it would demand its due. 

Eventually, weary of sending their bravest sons into the relentless maw of the elements, of giving up their virgin children to slake the sea’s demonic appetites, France’s coastal cities had admitted defeat. Their sailors had become blacksmiths, their fishermen metalworkers and merchants — and young Rivette, in his turn, had left Normandy behind to seek out his fortune on dry land.

Paris had been, by and large, at liberty from Nature’s tormenting spirits, until men had by their acts provoked them into wakefulness. Tonight, awakened by the bloodshed of the failed revolution, the turbulent Seine resembled nothing other than that Normandy coast: filled with treasures, guarded by monsters, ready to drag the worthy and unworthy to its unquiet depths.

Rivette took a deep breath and rallied himself sternly. He was no longer an untouched boy. Having left the coast and its childhood terrors behind, he had sought out steady, meaningful work in the nation’s capital, as well as the practical comforts of the many no-nonsense women, the occasional men, who shared that capital with him. 

Despite the Seine’s vengeful awakening, Rivette knew his duty was plain — to his city, and to his Chief. There was no question that he would press on, though by now the rain had soaked through his overcoat and his clothes were clinging wetly to his skin.

He continued along the banks of the Seine until he reached the Pont au Change, visible in the rain by the sulfurous light of a street lantern. Its stones rang under his feet as he hastened across the greedy abyss of river, his ears filled with its stentorian roar. In the distance he could see the margin of the Quai de Gêvres, the lights in the houses lining the quay extinguished, an ominous backdrop to the crash of the current beneath him.

As he approached, he thought he could make out the image of a man standing upon the parapet of the quay. For a dizzying instant, he thought it was the Chief. But the figure was taller and broader, coatless like a member of the underclasses, his face and hair showing pale against the murky gloom —

— before he leaped off the parapet into the Seine.

Again, Rivette hesitated. His throat seemed to have closed entirely. His fear deafened him. Once again he was a boy in Normandy, innocent in the ways of men, as fitting a sacrifice for sea monsters as for a sailor’s career aboard ship.

Once again, he rallied himself. His duty here was plain.

 

*

 

It had been a day and night of unprecedented horror, and the horror had just taken a turn for the worse, with a man casting his ambitions and his life into the Seine.

Valjean was no stranger to the horrors of the world. The day's revolutionary fervour, the tragic losses of life, the hours in the sewer, they were the most recent in a long line of terrible ordeals — long years spent in the bagne, toiling amongst violent criminals amid the prison hulks, held captive by the merciless jailor of the sea, in constant danger of violation by forces both human and inhuman. The trials of fire that had come afterwards, in the form of spirits that had tempted his soul, made manifest in a burning coin, in the flicker of candlelight, in the searing heat of the hot chisel.

On the precipice, once again he heard that fiery spirit of temptation. _It is too late to save him,_ the spirit taunted, as alluring as it had been in Montreuil, at the Gorbeau House. _Why pretend you can? You were never strong enough, and you will never be._

Valjean took hold of his courage; in his mind, he felt the metal sear the flesh of his palm. He had not previously surrendered to the tempting spirit, and he would not do so on this night. 

The Chief Inspector had shown astonishing mercy to Marius and to Valjean himself, after which he had, even more astonishingly, proceeded to fling himself into the river. Clearly, he had taken leave of his senses, or his own demons had assumed control over his volition and carried him away. In either circumstance, Valjean could not abandon him without an attempt at rescue.

He closed his mind to all thoughts of monsters. He spared a moment to calculate the speed and trajectory of the strangely-coloured current. Then he dived.

The river was deathly cold, colder than the depths of Toulon’s sea. Its deep waters were blood-dark; Valjean could barely see the hand before his face. The current was a sentient thing that seized him, that strangled the breath from his lungs, that buffeted him about as if he was a rag doll and not the man who had once lifted the caryatid of Puget at the town hall. He tried to kick with his legs, to strike out in the direction in which he had seen Javert carried away, but he found it impossible to fight free.

The waters closed around him as eagerly as they had in Toulon’s harbour — where the ocean, and creatures living in the ocean, could drag a man to his death on the sea floor, could consume his flesh, could violate that flesh with worse than destruction. Valjean’s nineteen years in the bagne had been unsullied ones, his virginity a siren song to his fellow convicts and guards, to the ocean and its creatures, and it had been a miracle that he had left that place with life and virtue intact. 

In the depths of the Seine, struggling against its current, Valjean was aware that, this time, he might not be so fortunate.

Flailing his limbs, starved of air, he saw bright spots before his eyes: the blue of Cosette's eyes, the motes cast by the Bishop's silver candlesticks at the end of the day, the brass buttons on Javert's uniform coat, glinting in the distance …

… slowly, he realised this last was not a hallucination. The current had, after all, steered him true. 

He heaved his arm forward with the last of his strength, and his fingers caught hold of sodden fabric.

Abruptly, the current changed its course, and Valjean was flung bodily against an uneven, rocky surface with enough force to smash the remainder of the air out of his lungs. A frantic gush of bubbles surrounded him; pain exploded around him; his vision turned a blinding white.

When he returned to consciousness, he found himself at the bottom of a deep trench, a vast gully of rock that had been gouged into the Seine’s river-bed. At this depth, the current had vanished, as had the blood-red darkness. The cold waters around him were still and almost transparent, so clear he could see the brightness of the moon on the river’s surface above him, the jagged walls of the trench that surrounded him, and beneath him, stones and assorted debris on the trench floor. 

Impossibly, he had managed to keep his grip on Javert’s coat. The Chief Inspector lay beside him in the trench. He was unconscious, but Valjean could see his chest rising and falling.

Even more impossibly, Valjean realised both of them were breathing in this clear water.

He also realised that the debris surrounding them was comprised of human bones. 

Now he tasted fear, and as he opened his mouth to cry out, he was enveloped in a crushing embrace. 

Something had seized him from behind — something that had been lying in wait between the rocks and crevices of the trench’s floor. Strange limbs wound like ropes around his wrists and ankles; sinewy appendages lashed around his neck and waist and thighs with encompassing strength. In the moment it took him to draw breath, Valjean found himself helplessly spread-eagled at the bottom of the trench.

In the same moment, other tendrils tore the Chief Inspector away from Valjean’s grasp. Valjean let out an involuntary, voiceless shout of _“No!”_ , and, terrifyingly, his words found a response.

_You would deprive us of our rightful sacrifice? And what would you give us in return?_

The voice in Valjean’s head was creaking and ancient and knowing, foreign and yet familiar at once — as the ocean around the bagne might have sounded, calling to him as he had laboured at the waters’ edge, or as the spirit-creatures in the harbour of Toulon.

Panic filled Valjean’s throat. He imagined a multitude of cephalopod eyes, the singular parietal orb of the leviathan, and around this sentient, unblinking centre, a black mass of writhing tentacles, dragging him down into the bottomless pit from which there was no escape. He began to struggle again, thrashing his body from side to side, but the brawny limbs held him fast.

A thick tendril curled itself slowly from the base of his skull, trailed along his jawline, and came to rest at the corner of his mouth, probing it, seeking entry. Valjean pressed his lips tightly together, trying to wrench himself loose, but to no avail. 

_You cannot both win free,_ the voice said, almost mockingly. _You must make your choice._

In response to Valjean’s struggles, the tentacles around his body clasped him even more closely, shockingly hot amidst the cold of the water. Impersonally, they encircled his hips and wound themselves about his legs; one slid between the deep cleft of his buttocks, and another travelled across the wet fabric of his trousers, pressing heatedly through his clothes against his manhood.

Despite his terror, Valjean could not hold back a groan, and the tendril inserted itself past the seam of his lips, thrusting into his mouth, tasting him. 

The creature’s touch was as foreign as any touch Valjean had received in the course of his long life — and yet it was, also, strangely familiar. Valjean had escaped from the bagne and its monsters untouched, had resisted physical as well as spiritual temptations throughout his long years on the run. He had learned to deny the cravings of his body and his soul, to sacrifice his own needs to meet the needs of others. But now, at the bottom of the river, having given himself up to rescue another, he found a long-buried longing beginning to stir to life. 

His soul had been purchased by the Bishop’s silver; he had thus far fought off all demonic attempts to arouse his criminal desires in Montreuil and thereafter. But perhaps here, in the Seine’s unfathomable chasm, far removed from the human realm and the harm those desires might inflict on others, it might be no shame to submit to them at last. 

His struggles diminished despite himself, and the monster’s grip changed imperceptibly in reply, the undulation of the swollen tentacles becoming almost a caress. The tendril slid down his throat like a grotesque, full-tongued kiss. 

In his mind, the hot hiss of words: _Be plain about it. Do you give yourself in his place?_

Once again Valjean saw himself submitting to Javert in Arras, saw himself freeing Javert at the barricades. And in his turn, Javert had assisted in Marius’ rescue from the sewers, had refused Valjean’s sacrifice; had cast himself into the Seine instead, in a final sacrifice of his own.

What other answer could Valjean give?

 _“Willingly,”_ he said, and the monster’s limbs slid beneath his clothes and tore the wet fabric from his body.

The muscular flesh was even hotter against his bare skin, lined with suckers that dug into the flesh of his throat and belly and undefended nipples. One appendage curled around his balls and another took hold of his half-hard prick, stroking it to full mast. A tendril pried itself into the tender opening of his cock-head, a small, concentrated agony that brought him to tears. He sobbed, and closed his eyes, and felt the water carry the salt away.

Other tentacles forcibly spread his thighs and prised his buttocks apart. Valjean began to struggle again, desperation rising within him, knowing himself as helpless against the strength of the demon-creature as he had been in the current, and yet still unable to stop himself. As he strained futilely against his bonds, a turgid mass rammed itself into his virgin hole, breaching him.

Valjean felt all his breath leave him in a choking moan; the force of this defilement tore inarticulate sounds from his over-filled throat. The tentacle inside him shoved deeper and deeper within, swollen and impossibly distended, a horror which he had never before experienced in his six decades of life. He could not help fighting against the violation, this act that was robbing him of his long-withheld purity, his self-effacement — that was, despite everything, forcing him to give way at last to desire. 

The tentacle was joined by a second, and then a third, oozing a thick, sloppy fluid, cramming Valjean’s passage with squirming, sliding flesh. The pain was almost unendurable — until the tendrils reached a knot somewhere deep inside his body, and Valjean found himself gripped with an overwhelming pleasure that made the last of his strength turn to water.

He was defenceless, stretched open, the creature’s appendages impaling him through every opening of his body, taking possession of him as if it never intended to let him go. He felt tears gather in the corners of his eyes, felt himself shuddering violently, felt his climax gathering and knew he could do nothing save surrender. 

The spirits of the Seine would always desire a willing sacrifice. Life, or virtue — either was acceptable, both would be welcome.

Javert had given himself to the river so Valjean could keep his liberty; Valjean could not help but try to repay him with a sacrifice of his own.

In the last moments before the storm engulfed him, he opened his eyes, the better to watch his doom approach. His vision swam from the river water; with some effort, he focused upon the wavering light from the river’s far-off surface, and the familiar features of Chief Inspector Javert.

His nemesis and benefactor was an arm’s breadth away in the trench, ensnared in monstrous tentacles as Valjean himself, his once-pristine uniform hanging in tatters from his imprisoned body. Awakened from his half-drowned swoon, his eyes were wide and intent, his mouth open in dismay. An expression of shock and disbelief had overtaken his once implacable features.

Their gazes met. Javert’s was filled with bewilderment, and something that, in another man, would have looked like horrified compassion. 

_Are you insane,_ Javert’s gaze demanded. _Why did you come after me? Why would you submit to this?_

That was the question, as it had always been; the answer this time was no different.

 _Because I could not stand by and let a man die, not even you,_ Valjean thought urgently, before his orgasm wracked through him and tore him from himself.

 

*

 

Son of a fortune-teller, Javert had been born into the shadow world. His mother had hidden his birth name in order to protect him; she died before she could reveal it to him when he came of age. Young Javert had turned his back on the spirits and demons of his heritage, fixed his sights squarely upon the world of men, and lived his life strictly according to men’s laws.

He had similarly withheld from petty desires of the flesh, had made himself a weapon against those who would have done society harm. He had relentlessly pursued men who had given themselves to the demons of temptation and defilement, and none more than the infamous fugitive, Jean Valjean, who had once styled himself after respectable men, but who instead belonged to the darkness.

Until the summer’s rebellion and the confrontation at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, when Jean Valjean had his mortal enemy delivered into his hands, and chose to let him go free instead. Valjean had rescued from the barricades a boy who intended to rob him of all his happiness; he had taken it upon himself to save Fantine’s daughter at great cost to himself. Javert belatedly recalled that Valjean had sacrificed himself willingly at the trial in Arras so that Champmathieu could go free — an act that had bewildered Javert at the time, but that made sense when considered in light of the man now revealed: a man who had been righteous after all.

Javert had found himself showing that man clemency in his turn, in an act of madness that had brought him and everything he had built into disrepute. He could not abide that Valjean should be returned to the galleys; he also could not abide that he, Javert, should live with having set a fugitive free. And so he had chosen to resign from his position in an act of defiance, and then from his life.

He should have known this was not the last resignation he would be required to endure; that Jean Valjean would not allow him the last laugh. Trust that infernal, saintly man to discover the one surrender that could negate Javert’s own sacrifice with his own. 

Valjean had cast himself into the Seine to rescue Javert. Had, in a desperate bargain for Javert’s life, allowed the river demons to defile his body and take from him his dignity. 

Roused from near-drowning to witness this terrible exchange, breathing in the strange water of his surroundings, Javert had striven against his bonds until his uniform was in tatters, to no avail. He could not free himself, could do nothing save watch with growing horror as river creatures held his benefactor down and spread him naked beneath their fleshy, swarming tentacles, and violated him again and again.

Valjean had sobbed and struggled, but had unquestioningly surrendered himself to the rapacious spirits. He had willingly assumed Javert’s place in an act even more incomprehensible than his previous surrender to re-arrest. Javert could not understand such clemency, such capacity for selflessness — he would have cast himself once again into the Seine to escape it, if not for the fact that such an escape had not succeeded the first time, and was even less likely to succeed now. 

Grimly, he forced himself to continue to watch. It was the least he could do to bear witness to Valjean’s impossible courage, that broad body being broken to save Javert from the fate that had awaited at the bottom of the Seine.

At the end, they locked gazes. Even in his extremity, Valjean’s suffering gaze was filled with a nobility that struck Javert to the core. As Valjean closed his eyes again, as his orgasm was wrung from him with a helpless, soundless cry, Javert felt something within his own chest give way.

Eventually, the tentacles released Valjean’s limp form. In turn, the appendages around Javert clasped him more tightly. Javert was dully aware of his own virginity; perhaps the demon would renege on its bargain, in the manner of demons, and subject him to the same horrors, and in the moment he found himself indifferent to the prospect.

Abruptly, without transition, the waters of the trench whipped into a foment. A whirlpool roiled the smooth surface of the river above. Another was being drawn into the blood-red depths of the Seine — an outline dressed in familiar navy that resolved itself, all at once, into the struggling figure of his second-in-command.

Rivette’s face was white with terror, his lips blue from the loss of air he had endured to arrive at this place. It was astonishing — but it seemed Valjean was not the only one who had leaped into the river after Javert. 

The dark tentacles stretched out to grasp the new intruder, to drag him down into the deep pit where the demons dwelt, to rip open his uniform and ruin him as completely as Javert’s other would-be saviour. 

Rivette found himself seized and opened his mouth to scream, bubbles escaping from his lips, his arms thrashing as he frantically sought air and found none.

Somehow, unlike Javert, he could not breathe in the waters of the trench. Somehow, the tentacles did not tear away his clothes, but instead released their hold, lobbing him away as though discarding him. 

Without conscious thought, Javert hurtled into action.

He launched himself at Rivette’s flailing body as if he was impervious to fear. The restraining limbs clawed at him belatedly, but he had caught the creature off-guard. One stroke, and a second, and he had swum free of the trench with Rivette in his arms. 

He realised he had won free of the demons’ domain when he was caught by the blood-dark current, and found he could no longer breathe.

No matter: his lungs were full of air from the clear waters of the trench, whereas Rivette was in tremendous need. Grasping his sergeant by the collar in what he hoped was a reassuring manner, Javert took hold of the man’s jaw and held him steady as he sealed their lips together.

Rivette’s eyes had slid closed. His mouth was slack and unresponsive, his tongue limp against Javert’s. For a moment Javert feared he had been too late. Then Rivette’s lips quivered, and when Javert exhaled a cautious, steady breath, his sergeant drank it down.

Javert gave Rivette a second breath of air, and then carefully broke the connection. Rivette sagged in his arms, weak from the aftermath of panic. His eyes were open now and filled with a dangerous trust.

If he had had sufficient breath, Javert would have called the sergeant the names he had usually reserved for the other petty officers of the Prefecture. As it was, a hitherto unknown emotion threatened to overwhelm him. _You idiot, why did you come after me?_ he railed in his head.

Rivette did not require breath to make his meaning clear, his gaze spoke volumes. _Sir, how could you expect me to do otherwise?_

Javert was spared from further musings on the topic when he suddenly realised that Valjean had been left behind in the demons’ realm. He narrowly bit back the curse that would have drowned him. There was nothing else for it, he would need to return to the trench. Could Rivette be trusted to reach the surface by himself?

Rivette solved this conundrum by propelling himself out of Javert’s arms in the direction of the trench. Javert could not instantly fathom why.

Then he turned, and saw Jean Valjean emerging from the pit, in no need of anyone’s rescue. 

Valjean swam strongly towards them against the current, his muscular limbs cutting through the dark waters. His naked, powerful form seemed somehow transfigured, as if, having withstood the worst of the river’s demons, he had transcended them. The grey hair waved around his head like a crown. 

Rivette grasped one arm, Javert the other, and all three of them swam together to the surface of the river.

They emerged into the air, and returned to the realm of the commonplace — to find the rain had stopped, and the clouds had parted, the stars shining down from an untroubled night sky. The swollen waters of the Seine appeared becalmed once again, with nothing to suggest the tremendous struggles that had taken place beneath its depths.

Eventually, they managed to haul themselves onto the riverbank below the Quai de Gêvres. Rivette fetched up the contents of his stomach onto the stones. Valjean knelt beside him and placed a soothing arm across his back.

“I’m sorry,” Rivette gasped, and Valjean comforted him as he wept. 

Javert could not stop watching them. Under the starlight, Valjean’s broad, naked body displayed the evidence left by Toulon’s lash and shackles, evidence which Javert had sought for so long in Montreuil; Rivette’s revealing an unexpected vulnerability not previously shown to his Chief in all their years in Paris. 

Mere hours before, Javert had come to the end of his life’s meaning, had determined to resign from everything he esteemed. Now, shivering and soaked to the skin, with the remnants of his uniform in tatters around him as much as the ruins of his old life, he discovered he did, after all, want to live.

He had made so many mistakes out of a lifetime of service. He would not make this one again, not when there were two men in his new world who had sought, at great cost, to save him from himself.

Stiffly, he set aside the river’s siren call, and went to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> E, you had me at Sexy Eldritch Horror ;) Beta by K.


	2. The Dream of the Fisherman’s Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ocean would give up its treasures, but at the same time it would demand its due.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A late addition to BBC Miz exchange, for Esteliel and Kainosite and those who felt that Rivette deserved some tentacle action all to himself. (With apologies to BBC Miz participants who had been driven by the first chapter of this thing to specify _no tentacles/non-human genitalia_ ;))

The smell of the Channel on a summer’s night is unmistakable: hot from the simmering sun, so pungent that the cliffs and rocks and expanse of beach-head are all redolent of it. Rivette is many years and even more miles from the Normandy coast, but it seems that coast has never left him.

Rivette cannot remember having taken a journey, but it seems he has travelled, regardless — to the unforgiving shores of his childhood home, whose hard littoral digs into his flesh as he kneels on its rocks, facing the open sea.

It seems he has travelled across time as well as space. His knees are scraped from rough-housing with his cousins, his thighs skinny with the last remnants of boyhood. The stalk of his still-innocent member hangs rosily between them. He is naked as he was on the day of his birth, and here, tethered by ropes, his nudity only serves one purpose.

The scent of the ocean is unmistakable, but when the monsters come, they are crafty and carry no odours with them, no heraldry save for an uncommon, turbulent current that signals they are near.

Here is the signal: a slow, ominous spiral across the water, and the waves gather in intensity. All at once a giant crest rears above him, teetering for a gravity-defying instant at its apex before crashing down from its great height.

Rivette is blinded by the salt, deafened by the water’s roar, his breath stolen away. He gasps and bucks against the ropes that bind him and shakes the wet hair away from his stinging eyes —

— and opens them, to meet the gaze of monsters.

There are many, or perhaps there is only one, with large, flat eyes that behold everything and nothing. A restless, limber mass the mottled colour of the ocean has heaved itself onto the rocky shelf before him, blotting out the horizon with its massive, undulating bulk. 

Rivette is so frightened he cannot scream. Human beings are not meant to withstand the sight of such horrors. Feeling his mind begin to crack around its edges, he squeezes his eyes shut in a desperate effort to escape.

But there is no escape from the appendages that seize hold of him, winding heavily around his undefended flesh. In like vein he cannot guard against the thoughts that have found their way into his fraying mind. At first there is an unformed maelstrom of sentience, something so ancient and vast that Rivette has no space to hold it all. Then the formless chaos coalesces into words —dark, creaking, older than time itself.

 _So, fisherman’s son — they have left you here for us, to fulfil our old covenant. Or perhaps you have come of your own accord?_

Rivette cannot answer; terror has sent him far away from himself. He feels the monsters roving in his brain, casually picking through the thoughts and memories that make him who he is — images of his father, who plies his nets from Normandy’s shores; his sailor grandfather, lost for these many years at sea; his friends, who tease him that he, too, has been marked for the ocean. 

_Perhaps it is to be both. A sacrifice, and a willing one._

The voice, the voices, sound almost amused, if such demons can at all be amused. The sound is horrifying, but not nearly as horrifying as the sensation of hot, turgid flesh sliding over his bare skin, flexing and curling with impossible strength. For an instant, Rivette thinks the monsters plan to rend him limb from limb, as casually as children pull the hind legs off crustaceans; that he will die screaming — and then the tentacles snake around his sex, and he understands a fate that is even worse than dying. 

_Which will you surrender to us — your life, or your innocence? We will accept both, if you are agreeable._ The appendages coil about his throat and thighs and spread the globes of his arse. Its hot, pointed suckers dig into his flesh like a thousand tiny barbs, drawing blood. 

Rivette finally hears himself make a mewling noise. Struggling would be useless, and he can barely move in any event, as helpless in the monsters’ clasp as skipjack in a fisherman’s net. But he cannot help the panicked, thrashing movements that rack through his body as it tries, despite everything, to defend itself.

Wildly, he thinks about the countrymen who have faced this same predicament. Foolhardy sailors who gambled away their lives upon the greedy seas; doomed innocents who knelt upon these very rocks and chose to keep their chastity. For a moment, he imagines making the same choice, and the ocean dragging him down into its depths until blessed oblivion takes him away forever.

Then the flash of love, the memories of comfort, the heady sense of loyalty: perceptions that seem to have no room in this strange child’s body, but that flare within Rivette nonetheless. These thoughts — half-formed, half-remembered — seem to give the monsters pause. The restless tentacles still in their undulations, halting their attempts to prise open his body, and curiosity suffuses the presence in his brain. 

_Where have you returned from, fisherman’s son? Your soul is older than this body. You’ve come from far away to the land of your birth._

Rivette feels a preternatural calm settle over him as the monsters set the tips of their tendrils into the cracks in his mind — there’s an instant of tearing — and awfully, too-fast, the memories rip free: the city, its boulevards and tenements, its teeming masses of the poor and dispossessed, the open insurgency, the violence in the streets… and afterwards, the river that ran blood-red. 

_The city_ , the creaking voices murmur, as if to themselves, in recognition. _You have seen the times of blood, that called our sisters from the river’s depths._

In painful, red-tinged flashes, Rivette relives the horrific images — bodies riddled with the bullets of the revolution, the raging river, the unspeakable things at the bottom of the river.

 _These are evils outside our world, evils brought by men. Their vengeance and greed have awakened those of us who sleep… in the city, the Lady, liberated by the fall of your petty kings, is summoned by revolution and will demand her due._

Reeling from this invasion, Rivette fights to understand. Have demons been raised by the city’s rebellion? Would the innocents of Paris fall hostage to those monstrous hungers, or are there those amongst the insurgents still unsullied and willing to give up their chastity to appease them? 

Slyly, the voices continue: _No wonder you seek to return to a time before you knew such things. A time when you still had a gift you could surrender to us._

As Rivette gasps, the appendages begin to stroke him meaningfully, in a parody of a human lover’s touch. With shocking lewdness, they rub themselves against his lips, caressing his half-hard prick to full mast. 

This is an ancient force, skilled at coaxing pleasure from the reluctant. Rivette thinks of the incubus who charms itself into maidens’ beds, of sirens who sing sailors to their deaths on the sea, and feels himself gripped by a mounting, urgent desire that is indistinguishable, in the moment, from his doom. 

This prepubescent body may not know such attentions, but all the same it finds itself unable to resist. His head falls back, his shy nipples harden to pebbles, the muscles in his thighs begin to quiver, as the tentacles slide thickly against his tongue, and fondle his balls, and tease themselves around the rim of his virgin hole.

Rivette moans with unwilling arousal, and the monsters make small, horrible noises of approval. A tendril laps at his entrance, tasting him thoughtfully; other tendrils lick across the surfaces of his mind, dipping into its crevices for carnal memories with which to tantalise him further. 

Rivette struggles futilely against both these violations. He can only imagine how the demons will use the memories against him — images of earlier, carefree off-duty hours dallying in a lover’s bed, of nights in dark alleys and shared rooms spent in ardent, furtive embraces. 

And there are the memories of very different days and nights. The long hours on duty made less onerous by the presence of the Chief at his side — days of secret longing for the stern man he served, nights spent fighting his furtive ardour. Once again Rivette sees the curve of the Chief’s strictly-shaven jaw, the rigid posture of shoulders and chest and limbs, the unleashing of controlled power when he took to the field… Rivette shivers, gripped with a helpless desire that has only grown greater the longer it has gone unsatisfied. 

The tendrils in his mind shift restlessly, savouring the emotions which are impossible for Rivette to suppress. 

_We see how you’ve used your time away from our coast. You’ve given your gifts to those of your kind, been given gifts in return… But this one, the one you would have given everything to…_

Through the haze of desire, Rivette feels the appendages slide around his thoughts of the Chief, flexing and curling in the crevices as if preparing, once again, to do violence. 

Somehow, this fear gives him a last, desperate strength. 

“No,” he says, “not this, not _him —_ ” And for the first time, he lets himself embrace his secret yearning, lets the years fill him, and carry him forward in the inexorable rush of the tide from the shores of his birthplace to his present home.

 

*

 

Rivette comes to himself shivering and panting as if rescued from drowning. Eventually, he realises he is racked by fever, and has been seized by a terrible, impossible haze of lust. 

The monsters may have vanished from his mind, the tentacles may have released his body from their sinuous caresses, but he is still their prisoner all the same — aroused and aching, wanting to claw off his overheated skin, his prick harder and more painful than it has ever been in his life. He can’t get enough air into his lungs or any friction against his swollen sex; he hears himself gasping for breath and for release.

“What in all hells is _wrong_ with him?” The unmistakable voice seems to come from very far away, but those familiar hands are right there, holding him down. Ordinarily, Rivette would be mortified at the thought of his Chief seeing him in this state, but he finds he has gone too far to care.

“The demons have him.” A less familiar voice, low and strangely comforting; a stranger’s calloused hand pressed to his scalding face. “Can’t you feel it? He’s burning with fever.”

“Of course I can feel it. That’s why I helped you remove his clothing. But that seems to have made matters worse.” Javert’s impatient words belie the concern in his voice. “Look at him! His balls are the size of a bull’s in heat. Don’t tell me that’s natural.” 

Impatience edges the stranger’s voice as well, though the cool hands continue with their soothing strokes; Rivette leans, blindly, into the touch. “Inspector, nothing about this is natural. He’s been dreaming of intimacy because of the demons. They’ve pursued him in his dreams all the way here, to your home.”

“He’s not dreaming now, is he? Rivette, can you hear me? Wake up, man!”

Rivette peels open his eyes. The world swims around him. He focuses with effort on his unfamiliar surroundings — an austere room lit by flickering candlelight, a too-large bed, Javert’s scowling face peering down at him.

It takes several tries to formulate words.

“…I’m here,” he croaks, finally. Javert scowls harder, with what Rivette recognises is actually relief. 

Rivette looks from Javert’s expression to where Javert is holding him by the forearms, and then further down. He does indeed seem to be stark naked, as the Chief has said, the fine cotton sheets rucked up under him in what he rather fears is Javert’s own bed. His erection bobs freely in the air, an angry purple; Rivette can’t help sobbing aloud at the sight.

“Damn it, get ahold of yourself,” Javert is snapping, but even he must see it’s futile. The monsters have travelled through time as well as distance to seek out Rivette, or perhaps it is the other way around, perhaps it’s he who sought them in his dreams — but in any case, such a claim is not so easily released. 

“That’s not helping,” the other man says, firmly. His face looms into view adjacent to Javert’s: the unexpectedly gentle countenance of the fearsome convict Jean Valjean. 

Valjean moves his hand down to Rivette’s chest, rubbing circles into the feverish skin; he leans in so that he can look into Rivette’s eyes. “Hold on. We’re going to help you.”

 _Please,_ Rivette mouths, and Valjean complies. His gaze never leaving Rivette’s, his free hand moves lower until it curls very gently around Rivette’s cock.

The touch is agonising, akin to the monsters’ searingly-hot tentacles. Rivette cries out as if he’s been burned, and Javert grips Valjean’s arm.

“What the devil are you doing?”

“Can’t you see what he needs?” Valjean shakes the Chief off as easily as swatting a mayfly. Then he pauses: “Maybe you can’t; maybe you’ve never seen it. But I can, Inspector. This is the way to help your man.”

“Please,” Rivette manages, and Javert, frowning in disapproval, nevertheless moves aside for Valjean to take Rivette in hand once more.

The next strokes are as painful as the first. Although Valjean is trying to be gentle, Rivette’s tormented body cannot distinguish a human caress from the dream-touch of monsters. But then Valjean’s thumb tugs across Rivette’s leaking cock-head and spreads the fluid across Rivette’s swollen length, and suddenly the movement becomes so pleasurable that it brings fresh tears to Rivette’s eyes. 

Rivette sags back into mattress, moans spilling openly from his throat, uncaring of how wanton he sounds, or of the Chief watching him, or anything beyond the blind need for release. He wants to buck against the hands that hold him down, to thrust again and again into Valjean’s grasp, but all his bones seem to have turned to water. 

Perhaps the monsters have always sought to claim him — his father’s son, so far away from their shores. Or perhaps some secret part of Rivette believes he belongs with those monsters; perhaps it’s the part that is ashamed of belonging to the Chief. But now that he has found himself in the hands of the most wanted man in Paris, the villain whom his Chief has been pursuing for so many years, Rivette finds he can do nothing save submit, and allow Valjean to bring him to completion.

His climax takes him so forcefully he loses himself for a moment: blinded by tears, deafened by the roar of his blood, breath and thought and life temporarily stolen from him, he comes and comes and is carried away from himself. 

When he returns, blinking and weak as a newborn, he’s unsure of where he is, or who he is — but there’s no mistaking who he’s with, or whose arms circle him.

The Chief is still scowling terribly, but he holds Rivette without complaint as Rivette weeps.

As Rivette’s tears run, he hears Javert address Valjean awkwardly: “Has he escaped the demons? Or will they come after him again in his dreams? Are we also at risk?”

Valjean has stayed close in the wake of Rivette’s need; Rivette realises that all three of them are gathered on Javert’s bed. “Perhaps we are,” the former convict says. “Perhaps everyone in Paris is, at least while the insurrection continues. If you will not arrest me, I should return to Cosette, to make sure she is safe.”

Rivette has no idea who Cosette is, but the Chief obviously does; he nods, woodenly. “Yes. You may do that. But afterwards…”

His voice trails off; for once, he seems uncertain as to how to continue. Valjean touches his wrist with something that looks like gentleness. “Afterwards, I will return. To watch over the deputy while he is asleep, to see the demons don’t seek him out again.”

Stiffly, as if it is an affront: “I am perfectly capable of watching over Rivette.”

Valjean’s eyes shine in the candlelight. “Then I will return to watch over you, Inspector, in the event that you should require assistance with the demons yourself.”

Javert hesitates. The expression on his face is unreadable; it is the same one which he wore when, astonishingly, he permitted Valjean to take a dying man to his grandfather’s house. Finally, he says, “I will allow it.” 

Rivette remembers Valjean releasing Javert at the barricades, and then going into the river to rescue him. Such acts of selflessness are difficult to understand. Unless saving a man’s life creates an obligation to preserve it in future, an intimate bond that death and monsters cannot break? 

If so, does that not mean that he, Rivette, is himself irretrievably bound to these two men, who plucked him from the river, and who saved him from the monsters plaguing his dreams? 

It is beyond him. But held fast in the Chief’s surprising embrace, Rivette realises that he has travelled far away from the life that he had known; has washed up onto unfamiliar shores, on the borders of an undiscovered country. 

Fortunately, it seems — from the look in Valjean’s eyes, from the clasp of Javert’s arms — he has not made the journey alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from this Hokusai [classic tentacle porn wood-block print](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_Wife). 
> 
> Thanks to S. for the beta!


End file.
